Microsoft Outlook

How can you tell if you’re reading email in a web browser or using email software like Outlook for Windows or Mac? This might seem obvious to some but many people use ’email’ without understanding the important difference between webmail and email programs. There are two ways to read and send emails: use software/apps like […]

Type or enter the ° Degree symbol into Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint or Windows programs generally. Degree ° is a common symbol and should be available in most fonts. If not, try another font or one of the fonts with a very wide range of characters like Arial Unicode MS or Ludica Sans Unicode. Typing […]

Office 365 hosted customers in Europe are recovering from an outage of about two days. Affected customers should make sure Microsoft gives them the downtime discount they’re entitled to. The outage affected Office 365 email and other hosting in the UK and parts of Europe, like The Netherlands and Belgium for about two days late […]

Outlook’s Clutter feature is going away in favor of the Focused Inbox. Both have the same limitation that Microsoft doesn’t talk about much. Clutter was a hyped Outlook/Exchange feature which shunted lower priority messages to a separate folder. Marketing emails, group messages etc could go to Clutter leaving, in theory, important emails only in the […]

If you like Reddit but want to hide it from your boss, co-workers, partner etc then we’ve got a web site for you. It makes Reddit look like Outlook Web Access (aka OWA). Go to https://attaxia.github.io/MSOutlookit/ or http://pcottle.github.io/MSOutlookit/ There’s a web page with the latest Reddit posts in the familiar form of Microsoft Outlook. The […]

As a quick example of what’s possible, here’s a quick look at some photo editing options in Microsoft Office, Word, Excel, PowerPoint or Outlook emails. Since it’s Christmas, we’ll use one of the famous Apollo 8 Earthrise images. We’ve already talked about how Apollo 8’s Earthrise, as we know it, is a cropped, rotated and […]

If you’re sending meeting requests or invitations there’s an important Outlook option to check. Normally, Outlook within a company, uses Microsoft’s own method for including meeting details. That’s OK ‘in-house’ where you can be sure everyone has Outlook. But you don’t know what people outside the organization use to manage email and calendar. Buried at […]

Icons are a relatively new part of Office 365 for Windows/Mac but can they be used in emails that go to people not using Office 365? SVG graphics are widely supported in web browsers but not all email programs know what to do with these new images. What do they see if you’ve used an […]

Meeting or party invitations don’t have to be plain, old white background emails, go for something a little more fancy or useful. Officially, Microsoft suggests using their Stationery themes to change the look of an email. But that’s not available for invitation emails. There are some formatting choices also missing from invitation emails. Whenever formatting […]

Sending out party and other non-business invitations is quite possible in Outlook. While the system is primarily intended for meetings in companies, individuals can use it too. All that’s in our article Easy Invitations with Outlook still applies today. Microsoft has tinkered with the look of Outlook but the fundamentals remain the same. Using Outlook […]

Office Watch reader, Meredith M. asks a question we’ve heard many times before. Why can’t you buy individual Office programs instead of paying for an Office bundle with programs you don’t need? “My issue: I need ONLY Word, Excel and Access–but I NEED them. I know that I cannot buy them separately but does anyone […]

It’s been five years since the Word, Excel, PowerPoint and other Office icons were given a new look. Now they’ve been announced and, frankly, we could not care less. New look icons don’t make any difference to anyone’s daily use of Office. It’s like supermarket groceries that boast ‘New Packaging’ as if any customers care? […]

Looking for some Christmas images, pictures or graphics? Microsoft Office has some in-built options for the festive tide of Yule. Add these images into Word documents, Outlook emails, PowerPoint slides or even Excel worksheets. Unsubtle Hint: Christmas Cheer with Office has a collection of festive cards, letters, gift tags, emails ready to open, edit and […]

Cyber Monday at Microsoft wasn’t a sales event so much as an embarrassment. Their Office 365 Exchange Server hosting went down, disconnecting Outlook software from the server. On this occasion, The Register reports that users could continue working via the web browser interface. Only the ActiveSync connection used by Outlook software was affected. Back in […]

Changing the color of an image or graphic is possible in Word, Excel, PowerPoint or Outlook. It’s one of those useful Office tricks that’s hiding away. We did this in our article about inserting Prince’s ‘Love Symbol Number 2’ in Office documents. The image is available in various formats but always black, not purple. As […]

Microsoft has released four security patches that all Outlook for Windows need to protect from newly discovered bugs. The patches apply to Outlook 365, 2019, 2016, 2013 and 2010 for Windows and are available today. The four Outlook security bugs are related. They involved a hacked .RWZ file that could be sent to you via […]

The latest ‘Insiders Fast Track’ Outlook for Windows has an interesting but somewhat incomplete new feature for managing appointments called ‘End appointments early’. It’s an overall setting at File | Options | Calendar | End appointments and meetings early. There are ‘end early’ choices for meetings: Less than one hour One hour or longer We […]

A new email trick to fool people into clicking a link from Outlook. It’s a ‘warning’ that your mailbox is near it’s size limit. The message was a little sophisticated by pretending to come from the real company that handles the domain. It was sent to an address with a domain managed by GoDaddy (the […]

It was inevitable that scammers would start using Office 365 as the basis for email scams, here’s what to look out for and how to avoid any dangerous web links. The scams are similar to the fake emails that pretend to come from banks and other large companies. They try to trick you into clicking […]

Adding email, calendar and contacts Live Tiles to the Windows Start Menu would seem like an obvious thing to do. Here’s how you can workaround to do it. On the Windows 8 and 10 large Start Menu are ‘Live Tiles’ which are updated to show the latest information. Some of them are setup to show […]

Office Insiders have a new toy to play with …. making images transparent in Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook. This is available now for fast track insiders with version 1810, build 10910.20007 or later. Pictures can be made transparent to reveal what’s behind in lower layers of the document, slide or worksheet. The new option […]

Office 2019, the new non-cloud version of Office for Windows and Mac, is now available to volume licence and commercial customers. This is the ‘cloud free’ or, as Microsoft call it the ‘on-premises’ version of Office desktop. It has no cloud related features and is ‘feature fixed’ with no future enhancements. There’ll be security and […]

The Windows clipboard is quite limited but there’s a better one hiding inside Microsoft Office for Windows. It can collect more items, paste in any order and be cleared when you like. We’ll also show how to keep the sometimes annoying pane out of the way. You’re about to hear more about the clipboard because […]

After a lot of talk and promises, Office Insiders are getting a look at the proposed Outlook for Windows single-line or Simplified Ribbon for Office 365 customers. As usual, there’s good news and bad news in the interface change. Though it’s early days and there’s still time for changes. Don’t Panic There’s no reason to […]

Outlook has only one date and time related feature in email messages. As you may know, Outlook’s email editor is really Microsoft Word with limited features. On the Insert tag there’s a Text | Date & Time option which opens the same dialog as in Word. Update Automatically inserts a field code, just like in […]

A small collection of non-security patches for Microsoft Office in September 2018. As usual, all these updates should come to you automatically. Non-subscriber / perpetual licence users can download individual patches if necessary but auto-update should handle it for you. Outlook 2016 The update for Microsoft Outlook 2016 introduces the following improvements: Fixes a crash […]

Microsoft has announced some truly important improvements in what you get with Office 365 Home, Personal and University plans. The Home plan will be available for six family members instead of five. How Microsoft calculates use of Office software is changing and for the better. All these changes apply from 1 October 2018 onwards for […]

Here’s what we know about the Office 2019 for Windows. There’s a matching page about Office 2019 for Mac. Before you get too excited Do NOT buy Office 2019 if you have Office 365 like Office 365 Home, Office 365 Personal or an enterprise plan. In other words, you pay for Office as an annual fee. […]

Here’s what we know about Office 2019 for Mac. There’s a matching page about Office 2019 for Windows. We’ll update this page as new information becomes available. Before you get too excited Do NOT buy Office 2019 if you have Office 365 plan like Office 365 Home, Office 365 Personal or an enterprise plan. In […]

Here’s how to improve your Word, Excel or PowerPoint Quick Access Toolbar (QAT) beyond the small changes allowed by Microsoft directly. You’ll be able to shorten the overly long text labels or change icons (because too many are the same) with a short list of images to get you started. Easily turn QAT items on/off […]

“More of the same” in August 2018’s round of security fixes for Microsoft products including Windows, Office, Word, Excel and PowerPoint. Overall there a sixty security flaws fixed this month alone, including two ‘zero-day’ bugs not previously known to the public. We’ve all become accustomed to this never-ending stream of security fixes for known exploits. […]

Microsoft seems to be moving towards a name change for ‘Office 2016’. They haven’t announced anything directly, but their documentation is changing for Windows and perhaps Office for Mac as well. If you’re confused, don’t feel bad because Redmond isn’t making it easy. They are moving gradually towards naming Microsoft Office as a service instead […]

The next macOS release will include a tool to migrate Outlook for Windows data to Outlook for Mac. The upcoming macOS release codenamed Mojave will have an improved Windows Migration Assistant. Apple says it will include more third-party programs including Microsoft Outlook. The news came via a sharp-eyed Twitter user who looked into the release […]

You’ve probably seen the headlines about the new ‘Outlook’ Dark Mode but there’s much less to this feature than all the hype suggests. It only applies to one of the many ” Outlook’s ” out there. We’ll explain what Dark Mode is, which Outlook it applies to and how to get a similar effect in […]

The Edinburgh International Festival is just one of the August festivals in the city. They have some methods of adding their show information into Outlook but with some traps along the way. On the My Festivals page for each account, use the ICS Calendar Link to get a list of your bookings to add into […]

If you love drama, comedy or music then you’d love Edinburgh, Scotland during August. It’s a busy, busy time with so much going on that you’ll need your online calendar and Outlook to keep track of everything. In this and other articles, we’ll give you a practical guide to managing a complex schedule using Outlook […]

The Edinburgh Fringe Festival has some help adding your Fringe bookings into Outlook with some tricks and traps they don’t mention. Overall The Edinburgh Fringe Festival has an excellent site and apps with an online calendar for each customer and a feature to download booked events into Outlook. It would be fantastic except that there’s […]

Here’s some tips from our Editor-in-Chief, Peter Deegan on getting the most from a Edinburgh visit in August. Create an online account with the main festival sites (International, Fringe and Underbelly). You can login and see what shows you’ve booked, make your own list of ‘favorites’ to choose from. Sign up for their email newsletters […]

Here’s how to make a custom ribbon tab in Word, Excel, PowerPoint or Outlook and how Microsoft has left customers shortchanged for the last decade. We’ve already talked about customizing the Quick Access Toolbar (QAT) for certain documents. You can make the QAT adapt according to the document you’ve opened. Alas, that’s not possible […]